PRI’s Lance Izumi on The Great Classroom Collapse

PRI’s Lance Izumi on The Great Classroom Collapse

[00:00:00] Albert Cheng: Hey everybody. Hope you’re doing well. I’m Dr. Albert Chang coming to you from the University of Arkansas and welcome to another episode of the Learning Curve podcast and co hosting with me this week is Alisha Searcy. Hey Alisha.

[00:00:33] Alisha Searcy: Hey Albert. How are you?

[00:00:35] Albert Cheng: Ah, doing all right, doing all right. Semester’s off and running, and it’s looking like, starting to look like fall over here.

[00:00:41] Alisha Searcy: Yeah, same here. I think the summer is finally gone in Atlanta. Hotlanta is becoming Hotlanta, that’s right. Just regular Atlanta, so it’s beautiful. How’s the baby?

[00:00:51] Albert Cheng: Baby’s good. Yeah, I mean, it’s always hard, but we’re thankful.

[00:00:55] Alisha Searcy: Yeah, and they’re just so darn cute.

[00:00:58] Albert Cheng: Yeah, you bet. Well, hey, you know, we catch up for a long time, but I guess we got an exciting show today.

[00:01:04] Yeah, super excited. Yeah, Lance Izumi is going to be joining us to talk about his new book, The Great Classroom Collapse, Teachers, Students, and Parents Expose the Collapse of Learning in America’s Schools. But before we do that, we should talk some news. And I don’t know, I guess if you’ve been tuning into the show, you know, I like to talk about math, but I’m not going to talk about math today.

[00:01:22] I actually going to talk about poetry, which is something that I think I’ve mentioned before on the show. And there’s a excellent article that I want to recommend to our listeners by Dr. Clay Green, who’s a professor at the new University of Austin, which we talked about off and on on the show. The title of the article is Why Poetry Should Be Read Online.

[00:01:41] Allowed in English classes with the subheading Orality is an essential component of teaching students to love verse. And it’s one of these things that seem obvious, but then I’m like, wait, why didn’t I think about this? You know, a lot of times when we teach literature and especially poetry, We just give students the words on a page and then ask them to pick it apart.

[00:02:04] And they’re, you know, there they are reading it silently to themselves or, you know, reading it silently as they do homework. And when at the end of the day, for much of human history, poetry, especially not to mention other texts were meant to be heard. And so, you know, why aren’t we doing more of that in our classes to teach students to love verse?

[00:02:25] And, you know, one of the points that he made in the article, I remember, that’s going to stick with me, really. You know, he talks about how poetry understood historically was It existed in the same category as music, and so, you know, we kind of think of tonality and pitch and harmony. I mean, there’s something about how the words sound when you say them aloud, and he was talking about how, you know, the spoken word is pretty common art these days, and how, I mean, imagine doing spoken word and all you do is read what the, what the work of art is instead of hearing it, right?

[00:02:58] So, anyway, I want to recommend this article to folks. I’m certainly Teachers of English, and then literature, and then poetry. Maybe this is old news to them, but yeah, take a look at what Dr. Green has to say. I think it might just rejuvenate and kind of get you excited again for what we can do to teach poetry more effectively and get kids to love verse.

[00:03:19] Alisha Searcy: I love that, and it makes total sense. I’m an auditory learner, so if I think about what it would mean for me to listen to someone read a poem, it’s going to resonate with me even more, right? Whoever the instructor is, or if there’s a student reading it, their inflection, their interpretation is going to leave an impact.

[00:03:39] So, it makes a lot of sense, very powerful, and I think it really speaks to, again, different ways that people learn. and how poetry and other forms of literature, if you will, can teach us. So I love that. Yeah.

[00:03:51] Albert Cheng: Yeah. Yeah. And certainly, you know, and if listeners, if you haven’t listened to, um, our episode a couple of weeks ago with Dr. Richard Holmes and Samuel Cooleridge and the rhyme in the Ancient Mariner, check that out. I mean, that was an awesome conversation about Cooleridge’s poetry and that work as well, Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, so check that out.

[00:04:09] Alisha Searcy: Absolutely. I love doing this show. There are always so many interesting things and interesting people that we get to talk to and super excited about today. And in fact, my article, I think, connects to our guest for the day and just this conversation about education policy. And so my article comes from Newsweek. The Education Policy That Makes a Difference is Not the One You Think.

[00:04:33] Albert Cheng: Oh, huh. Well, that’s a provocative title. It is. I love it.

[00:04:37] Alisha Searcy: Yeah. And particularly because, you know, as you all know, I’m a former state legislator.

[00:04:42] And so education policy is my jam. You know, it’s what we think about all of the time, certainly in my job with Democrats for Education Reform and Education Reform Now. We live and breathe education policy and what it is we need to do to make a difference for kids. And so in this article, the author is essentially talking about, number one, the things that are not working. So, we think if we just give more money to education that that’s going to work. He says increasing per pupil spending sounds like a no brainer, but it can deliver little or no learning at all if the money isn’t used wisely. And we know that, but somehow we’re still, some of us are still advocating for more money.

[00:05:23] How about a second thing that we always hear, Albert, that if we just made classes smaller It would make a huge difference. And those of us, again, who follow this and have done the research, you know, or have read the research, you know that class size doesn’t matter, right? If you don’t have an effective teacher in front of those kids.

[00:05:43] And so the author talks about the fact that teachers can devote more time to individual needs. So you would think, but analysis finds that reducing class size is not. Effective is one of the least cost effective ways to improve student learning. And so, what is it? Drumroll, please.

[00:06:01] Albert Cheng: Yeah, we need like a sound effects booth or something.

[00:06:05] Alisha Searcy: We do, we do.

[00:06:08] Albert Cheng: Yeah, so what is it?

[00:06:10] Alisha Searcy: So, this comes from Malawi. Right? Southeast part of Africa, one of the poorest countries in the world that suffered from overcrowded classrooms, lack of learning materials, shortage of trained teachers, and I’m stalling, but do you know what it is? No, I, I, uh, yeah, you don’t have to tell me.

[00:06:30] It’s technology assisted learning, Albert. Which is not groundbreaking at all because we know the technology and particularly personalized learning when you’re using technology is the key. And so what they have done is spent like 15 per kid. Every kid has one hour. on a device and they get personalized learning based on where they are right and what their needs are.

[00:07:00] And for an hour a day, this research is pointing out that if you get a kid on hour a day for a year, you can get a year’s worth of learning. in for students. So this policy is incredibly cheap. As I said, costing 15 per pupil in Malawi. And it’s again, because they’re only using this tablet for one hour a day until they’re able to share it amongst other students.

[00:07:24] And so because they’ve had such incredible results, they are scaling up this policy to all of its 6, 000 primary schools. And it’s going to reach millions of kids. Sierra Leone, Tanzania are also working to implement this same approach. And so I appreciate this piece for a couple of reasons. Number one, pointing out the things that we keep saying that we want to do in the U. S. that are not working, reminding us that it does not. But number two. Talking about the effective ways that we can use technology and again, how important it is to personalize learning. So love this article. And again, I think it’s perfect for the conversation that we’re going to have today about what is and what isn’t working in our education system.

[00:08:07] Albert Cheng: Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that. I think there’s a lot to think about, particularly, you know, what we might learn from that research in Malawi and, you know, what we might do here in the States. Yeah, I’m all, I’m with you. I’m a firm believer, you know, education at the end of the day is a personal and human enterprise.

[00:08:24] And I know we’re all tempted to kind of impose the industrial model and scale it up. But, I don’t know, some human things are, you know, Just human things. Um, of course, I guess there’s a question of how do we use technology to preserve that? And I guess maybe that’s the million dollar question.

[00:08:39] Alisha Searcy: So how do we leverage it instead of take it away? But that’s a different discussion and I’m not going to start today.

[00:08:45] Albert Cheng: Yeah. All right. Well, we’ll put a bookmark there. And coming up after the break, we’re going to have Lance Izumi to talk about his new book.

[00:09:01] Lance Izumi is Senior Director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute. He has written and produced books, studies, and films on a wide variety of education topics. He is the author of The Great Classroom Collapse, Teachers, Students, and Parents Expose the Collapse of Learning in America’s Schools, and Choosing Diversity, How Charter Schools Promote Diverse Learning Models and Meet the Diverse Needs of Parents and Children.

[00:09:23] Lance received his Juris Doctorate from the University of Southern California School of Law, his Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of California at Davis, and his Bachelor of Arts in Economics and History from the University of California at Los Angeles. Lance, it’s a pleasure to have you on the show.

[00:09:39] Welcome.

[00:09:40] Lance Izumi: Well, thank you very much, Albert. It’s great to be on the show with you and Alisha. It’s always a great honor for me to be on anything associated with the Pioneer Institute. We’ve worked together very closely over the years, so I have a real special place in my heart for the Pioneer Institute, so I’m really happy to be a guest on the show.

[00:09:58] Albert Cheng: Yeah, great. Well, we’re happy to have you here, and thanks for that. Let’s get into your new book, The Great Classroom Collapse, Teachers, Students, and Parents Expose the Collapse of Learning in America’s Schools, and in it, you identify key reasons why, despite decades of K 12 reform efforts, billions of dollars spent, many American schoolchildren still cannot read at grade level.

[00:10:19] can’t do basic math, and are unprepared for college and the workplace. So for those who are listening that aren’t familiar with the book, could you first give us a brief summary of why you wrote this book?

[00:10:31] Lance Izumi: Well, thanks very much Albert. Uh, well, I thought that this book was really needed to kind of get below kind of the big picture.

[00:10:38] Thank you. picture, uh, you know, statistics and numbers we often see with test scores and to really find out what is going on down at the classroom level to find out why are kids doing so poorly in the basic subjects of reading and mathematics. And so, you know, because, you know, You know, for those of us in the education reform movement, we often point to scores such as the National Assessment for Educational Progress and, you know, we’ll point to something like, for example, amongst 8th graders taking the National Assessment that 70 percent of them are not proficient in either reading or math, which is a massive number and it’s horrible.

[00:11:18] But the question is, why are they doing so poorly? And that’s what I wanted to answer in this book. And that’s why I You know, decide that, you know, in order to do this, not just to look at the research literature out there, but to make it more meaningful, interesting for the average reader, the average person who is wondering about this.

[00:11:38] I interviewed students, I interviewed teachers, I interviewed tutors, parents, I interviewed a college professor and a state legislator, all to really get their viewpoint about what exactly was going wrong. In the classroom that was affecting our children and so that they were unable to do the basic subjects that half a century, a century ago, you know, it was taken for granted that kids would be able to read and do mathematics.

[00:12:06] But now, you know, it’s obviously a huge challenge. So, after interviewing these different people, individuals and each one of the people that I interview has a separate chapter telling their story. So it’s not just like we’re having a quote from this person or a quote from that person. No, each chapter tells the story, complete story of why this student, this teacher, this tutor is seeing what they’re seeing in the classroom, how it’s affecting academic performance and trying to, you know, pull that.

[00:12:37] Curt, in a way, so that the average person can see what is actually going wrong, and the book has three sections. The first section is devoted to equity slash social justice issues as a big reason why there’s been a decline, but also then the second section hones in on the collapse of reading in America, and the third section hones in on the collapse of mathematics as well, and then we end with conclusions, and so that’s the summary of the book.

[00:13:05] Albert Cheng: Well, let’s get into some of these themes and content here. You know, you just talked about one of the, really, there’s an overarching outlook, shall we say, in American K 12 schools that seems to be more focused on things like social justice, things like various political agendas, rather than, or I should say, at the expense of academic quality and intellectual rigor in the curriculum. Why has that happened? Why have other ideals like equality of opportunity, meritocracy, why have they taken a backseat in lots of districts, schools, and classrooms?

[00:13:37] Lance Izumi: One of the things that, you know, has really overtaken a lot of public education, actually education in all sectors, really, is this concept of equity. And you mentioned equality, Albert, and equality and equity are not the same thing. Equality means that you have the Equal opportunity to be able to achieve to your highest level according to your own innate talents and to your hard work and the effort you put in on it. Whereas equity means that you want all students or all individuals to actually achieve at the same level regardless basically of merit or hard work or any other thing.

[00:14:20] Individual efforts. So equality of opportunity is really focused on the individual. Whereas equity is focused on large groups. And that’s what we’re seeing is that equity has now become the mantra in K 12 education. And in order to illustrate this, I actually profile a student and a parent. The student that I profile is a student.

[00:14:44] A young woman named Charlotte, and I’ve changed her name for the book, but she goes to a high school that required, at least up to relatively recently, a entrance examination, and it’s a public school, to get into, and so students were admitted on merit, and that has been changed in order to promote this concept of equity to a public school.

[00:15:06] Lottery system, so it’s totally random whether you get into this school or not. And so this school, which had been viewed as one of the top performing schools in all of California, is now using a method of admission. That is not promoting merit, it’s promoting equity instead, so that again, everyone has basically the same chance of getting in regardless of merit.

[00:15:30] And so, what Charlotte has seen is a real decline in the quality of education that she’s been receiving ever since this change. And she says that what you’re seeing is the students are now less prepared, and in order to confront this reality, the teachers are having to reduce the workload. And so, they’re not covering as much material as they used to.

[00:15:55] Charlotte told me that in her honors chemistry class, she noticed that the teacher was going slower and he even admitted that he was not able to cover as much material as he used to in previous years. She’s also seen that grading has also become much more lenient and grading has now gone on a curve in order to allow more students to pass courses and get higher grades.

[00:16:19] Bye. Instead of having absolute benchmarks, like 90 percent is an A, 80 percent is a B, yeah, instead you have a curved system. Also too, she’s seen that this concept of Equity grading has now seeped into the classroom so that students get multiple chances to take exams, they get multiple chances to turn in homework, and they actually get partial credit even if they turn in no homework.

[00:16:45] So, all of that is been instituted in the school in order to promote this concept of equity so that everybody basically ends up getting an A. Kind of similar types of grades and, but that doesn’t mean that the students are getting a quality education. And she says that you can see this in something like her history class.

[00:17:04] And instead of really learning history, she says a lot of the time spent in history is actually now spent doing remedial English. So, because the, the, the skills of the kids are now so poor in English that they can’t, you know, do the history assignments. And so, therefore, the. The social studies and history teachers have to now fill in for the English that they should have learned sometime earlier in their careers.

[00:17:30] And so, you know, I think that that indicates the state of education in America because here’s a school that it’s not one of your typical schools that you think of when you think of a low performing school. You think of maybe a low income urban school, but this was a high performing school previously, but because of these social justice equity.

[00:17:52] Moves on the part of the school district, you have now literally dumbed down the education for the students at this school, and kids like Charlotte are now suffering. I’ll then say one last thing about a parent named Oradola Taylor, who I profiled, and she is in Minneapolis. And she says that she sent her child to a school called, uh For the French Immersion School, again, a public school, and that school was started by African Americans, I mean, literally African people who are immigrants from Africa.

[00:18:23] She herself is a immigrant from Sierra Leone on the west coast of Africa, and she said this school was heavily immigrant populated with students from Africa, you know, Asia, and other places. This school was one of the highest performing schools in the world. in the Minneapolis school district, and yet the school was ended up being dumbed down.

[00:18:43] The traditional math curriculum, for example, that was producing high results was taken out, and the district curriculum that was producing low results was instituted there. All these types of changes that ended up dumbing down the school, and Ori Dola told me that the reason was because this school was undercutting the narrative, the progressive narrative of the district, that low income and minority students were poor performing because of systemic racism.

[00:19:12] And yet this school, which, again, had students from many parts of Africa and other foreign countries, that they were performing well despite their disadvantages, and that was an embarrassment for the school. to the district. And so, unfortunately, in the interest of equity, they were cut down instead of having the rest of the schools in the district rise up and copy their model.

[00:19:35] Albert Cheng: Yeah, I mean, Lance, I just want to give a chance to share some more examples from parents, teachers, and students. I mean, you said you interviewed several of these types of folks. What are some other stories, quotes, perhaps, things you learned from interviews that you drew upon to highlight some of the key lessons you’re trying to convey?

[00:19:53] Lance Izumi: I really enjoyed writing this book, Albert, because of these interviews, because these people that I interviewed had really compelling stories, and I think they’re the types of stories that the average person can empathize with and see themselves going through the same types of situations, oftentimes, that the people I interview are relating to me.

[00:20:14] One of the, I think, the most compelling interviews I had for the book was with a former teacher in Georgia named Missy Purcell. And Missy was an elementary school teacher, she taught fifth grade, she had been educated at the University of Georgia, got her teaching credential there, and yet when she went into the school system, to her elementary school, she really didn’t know how to teach reading effectively.

[00:20:42] She had been taught how to teach reading, but using very ineffective methods that had very little research basis for them at all. And so she ended up teaching using progressive methods, and we can talk about that in a bit, but they were very ineffective. She had never, in the entire time she had been at the University of Georgia, been taught how to teach kids using phonics, for example.

[00:21:06] Phonics, we know, is part of the science of reading, which many of your listeners may have heard about, but the science of reading is, you know, phonics, which is, involves phonics. phonemic awareness, the sounds of letters and phonics, putting together those sounds to letters and then combining them into words, and then vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension all together make up the science of reading.

[00:21:29] But Missy had never heard any of that. And that’s, even though that has been one of the most effective ways to teach reading. And she goes into her classroom and starts using it. These ineffective, progressive methods of teaching reading, and she ends up having kids who can’t read. And one of the things that, you know, really made her very emotional when she was talking to me and listening to her story, made me emotional as the author, was when she told me the story about how she started to realize That as kids were going through her class, that by the time they left her fifth grade class, they didn’t know how to read.

[00:22:12] And she remembers that she started to follow the future progression of some of her students. And she remembers this one girl that she followed, and who, I ended up getting a dead end job, not making a lot of money, and yet this girl, she said, left her class not being able to read, and she wondered how much did she have to do with the fact that now this particular girl Had a very limited economic future, you know, because she probably was not given any other educational tools along the way after she left Missy’s class.

[00:22:52] And so she ends up having this, as I say, limited economic future. And that wasn’t just the only example. She said that there were other examples. She said that there was a French Canadian boy who was in her class, who by the end of the time she was finished with him in the fifth grade, Literally could not write a complete sentence and again she had to stop the interview and gather herself and she said I always wondered what happened to that boy after he left my class because he simply couldn’t write a sentence and I’ll tell you what happens to these kids I talked to another teacher she was actually a district teacher of the year in Virginia and she told me You That, you know, she taught English and journalism, and she said that she had kids coming into her English and journalism classes who literally didn’t know what an adjective was, what an adverb was, and this is in high school, and, you know, she’s teaching journalism, and these kids literally don’t know what the basic parts of sentences are, and so, I think that those are the types of stories that need to be out there that people understand that, you know, yes, there are, you know, these testing statistics, which are very important for us to look at, but there are individual stories that go along with those poor scores. And there, these poor scores are really almost in a certain sense, mask the individual tragedies that are occurring in each and every classroom, you know, across the United States.

[00:24:28] Albert Cheng: Yeah, well said. Thanks for sharing some of those stories. I tell my students oftentimes that there are people, actual people behind the data points.

[00:24:36] We, you know, spend a lot of time learning how to understand and analyze, so. But I do want to just follow up because, you know, in Chapter 3 where you talk about reading instruction, I mean, you cite the The 1990 National Reading Panel mentioning 100, 000 studies that were examined that provided decades of empirical evidence for the effectiveness of phonics and phonemic awareness in terms of getting kids to learn how to read.

[00:25:01] And then you fast forward to more recent work in 2023 from the National Center for Teacher Quality, where they cite additional sources about reading science. Yeah. Could, you know, for the listeners who aren’t familiar with the Different kinds of reading pedagogy that are out there. Could you just say a few words and give them a sense of what we’re talking about here?

[00:25:20] Lance Izumi: Yeah, thanks Albert. I mean, I think that’s important. You know, I mentioned the science of reading and that’s, you know, a lot of people understand intuitively what the science of reading is because Many of them actually, especially if they may be older, grew up learning how to read using phonics. I know in my case, for example, my mother, who’s an immigrant from Japan, actually taught me to read even in her broken English, but she used phonics.

[00:25:46] She used an old, you know, vinyl LP phonics record to teach me how to read with flashcards. And so people, you know, know what phonics is. It’s basically, it’s sounding out, right? But there are other, unfortunately, methods. And then that, and that phonics based method, you know, as you point out in the question, is supported by, you know, literally thousands of studies that say this is the most effective way to read.

[00:26:11] But there are other reading methodologies that are pushed by progressives, and one of them is called the balanced literacy, and it has actually very little Empirical evidence or research to support, certainly not in the amounts that support the science of reading phonics based instruction. And one of the reasons for that, and there’s a lot of actual evidence to show that is this balanced literacy instructional method for reading is what is at the basis of the poor reading skills that we have in this country.

[00:26:42] And one of the key reasons is because Part of this balanced literacy methodology is to use something called 3 Qing. And 3 Qing means basically guessing. So if a child sees a word and they don’t know what it is, you’re supposed to guess at the word. If they still can’t guess what the word is, they should look at a picture.

[00:27:06] And then connect that word to the picture, and then guess at what the word is. So, for example, if you see the picture of a horse, you might guess that the word is horse. Well, if you’re still incorrect, because maybe the word is actually pony, then you’re supposed to look at the first letter of the word, and then look at the picture, and then try and guess again.

[00:27:27] So basically, this 3 Q ing method is really the 3 guessing method, and, you know, it doesn’t help that, Kids, when you think about their progressing to more and more difficult pieces of reading that don’t have pictures, for example. So what you find is that children who use this 3 Qing method are very stunted in their reading skills and Missy Purcell was using that type of reading methodology to instruct her kids.

[00:27:54] And again, we can see from her experience that her kids were coming out of her classroom with Unable to read, and certainly not reading at grade level. And in fact, she said that she was under pressure to give kids higher grades, because like if you’re in a 5th grade class, but they’re reading at a 2nd grade level, but the kids are actually, actually can read at a 2nd grade level, she felt pressured to give them an A, because at least they could read at the 2nd grade level.

[00:28:20] Which is, of course, sending the wrong signals to both the student, the parent, and the teacher. and the teachers down the road that this is a student who can read. So, I think that one of the good things that’s developing, though, across the country is that you are seeing more and more states that are starting to junk this balanced literacy 3 Qing methodology in favor of phonics, and maybe we can talk about that a little later in the podcast.

[00:28:46] Alisha Searcy: I appreciate that. There’s so much that I want to talk about, and we’re going to continue on this conversation about reading, but I have to say I really appreciate the passion and the concern that’s coming out, and I hope that lots of people hear this interview and understand, frankly, how we’re harming children.

[00:29:04] You know, we look at the data and we talk about that kids are not reading proficiently, but we don’t talk about the fact that it’s really adults who are making these decisions that’s impacting the way they learn reading. So I really, really appreciate the stories that you’re talking about from educators and from parents and students.

[00:29:20] And so in Chapter 6. It’s entitled, Bad Reading is Not Just in Public Schools. Would you talk about this larger problem, and you’ve alluded to it or talked about it already, but a little bit more, this larger problem that American schooling has with teaching reading as well as the policy implications this has for the growing number of private school choice programs across the country?

[00:29:44] Lance Izumi: You know, I think, Alisha, that that’s a very important point that I wanted to get across to people. And for my entire career, I’ve worked for the Pacific Research Institute for 30 years. I’ve supported school choice in that entire time, written books about school choice. It’s important to understand that these poor reading Methodologies are not just employed in the public sector, they’re employed overwhelmingly in the public sector, but, you know, there are parts of the private sector as well that also use these ineffective progressive methodologies.

[00:30:16] And that’s why I profiled a woman named Becca Sinclair, who is a mom of a number of children, and she sent her children to a, you know, relatively high price school. Private school up in Marin County, which for your listeners who don’t know the area, it’s right above San Francisco, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

[00:30:40] It’s a very beautiful area. So Becca sent her kids there and she said that that same Ineffective, progressive teaching methodology that I mentioned before, this balanced literacy, this three queuing, was being used at this very high priced private school that she was sending her kids to. And what was happening, and this is shocking, is that, so here are these parents who are paying an arm and a leg to send their kids to this very tony private school, and yet their kids are having a hard time reading.

[00:31:10] And so, she said that she knew multi millionaire Tech parents who were having to hire tutors on the side for a lot of money in order to teach their kids reading. At the same time, they’re spending incredible amounts of money on tuition to send their kids to this private school. She also said that, you know, in San Francisco, she knew this billionaire who was also doing the same thing, having to hire a tutor on the side for to instruct that parent’s child in reading when that billionaire was sending the child to a very, very expensive private school in San Francisco.

[00:31:48] So, what this shows is that this ineffective methodology can be anywhere, and it’s really up to the parents to understand what works and what doesn’t work, and whether you’re sending your kid to a public or a private school. You can’t just assume that because the public school may be failing your child, that just by sending your kid to a private school, that will automatically lead to failure.

[00:32:11] mean that your child will receive a more research based, empirically based education, and that may not be the case. I will say that at this private school that Becca Sinclair was sending her kids to, that the parents were actually asked to, because the parents there were relatively well off, were asked to actually fund the school.

[00:32:30] trips by the teachers to get instructed in this progressive teaching methodologies. So the parents actually were funding the failure of their kids by sending their teachers to get this ineffective teaching education, which is just, you know, Shocking. I will say this, though, with regard to, you know, the private sector and with school choice, is that at least with the private sector, and if you’re making that choice to send your kids to a school that was failing your kids, you can always take your kid out and put your kid into someplace else where they are doing a better job.

[00:33:05] And there are lots of other ways to do that. Private schools, charter schools, other types of alternatives that are doing a much better job when it comes to providing effective reading methodologies for their students. That is not the case oftentimes in the public sector, where if they choose to adhere to a progressive, ineffective teaching methodology with an associated curriculum, then you’re stuck. If you don’t have the means, you’re stuck, and you can’t just go from one elementary school to another elementary school and expect that something would be different. It won’t be.

[00:33:39] Alisha Searcy: Wow. Thank you for pointing out just how important it is for parents to know what’s being taught in schools. And if people are not already fired up, as you are listening, now it’s time to turn to math.

[00:33:52] And so I want to ask you, for many decades, There have been quote unquote math wars over the academic quality and pedagogy involved in math instruction. So, can you talk about the education school driven constructivist math that’s found in many K 12 classrooms in America and how that differs from pedagogical approaches to math found in most high performing countries like Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea?

[00:34:22] Lance Izumi: Yeah, no, I think that’s a very important question, Alisha. In mathematics and, you know, in other subjects as well, but especially in mathematics, this is Progressive ideology called constructivism has played havoc with American students in their pursuit of understanding math and learning it well. And what constructivism means is that, you know, it’s kind of like what the word says.

[00:34:47] It means that students have to construct their own knowledge base. And that means that there is de emphasis on direct instruction from their teachers. And so students are oftentimes left to kind of figure it out for themselves how to do mathematics or, you know, whatever subject they’re learning, but in this case, mathematics.

[00:35:09] The trouble is, is that it is often, mathematics is a confusing subject for many students. And if you’re asking students to basically do trial and error, and discover their own learning or discover concepts and then construct their own knowledge base in math, you’re going to end up having a lot of frustration because for a lot of students mathematics may not come naturally.

[00:35:33] They have to have more direct instruction and teaching from their teachers to be able to understand the mathematic operations. And so, What you’ll find in constructivism is kids who will be given like a tiny bit of information by the teacher, but then for the rest of the class, it’s up to them to kind of try and figure out, you know, how to multiply fractions, how to do long division, all these other types of operations.

[00:36:03] And, you know, again, it’s difficult. And the kids will often be very frustrated as they’re trying to do this because they simply don’t understand, and they need some kind of help from the teacher, and the teacher is basically told not to give them that type of help. Just give the kids hints so that they try and discover it on their own.

[00:36:22] I remember one of the first studies that I did for the Pacific Research Institute was to actually analyze the curriculum of at the schools of education at the California State University system. And so, you know, in their mathematics teaching curriculum, you found that, you know, again, they were pushing these progressive constructivist pedagogies.

[00:36:44] And one author of a textbook for these prospective teachers in the California State University system actually said that don’t worry if students are confused, because confusion is necessary for this methodology, which is like insane, because I don’t know about you, Alisha, but when I was taking math, if I was confused, I was not learning.

[00:37:09] And so, and this is the sort of thing I found out when I talk with people like Mike Malione, who is a Former high school teacher and now is a professional math tutor. And he was telling me about how when he was in the classroom, he was told by his school district. And again, he’s not in a low income district.

[00:37:30] He was in a high income district in Northern California. And he was told that he wasn’t supposed to tell his students how to solve problems. They would tell him that he would just have to give them hints, and they would have to then figure it out on their own. You know, the students would tell him, aren’t teachers paid to teach us?

[00:37:51] And you have to wonder, well, aren’t they? I mean, why should teachers just be basically wallflowers, watching their students in the classroom struggle? And so, he would, you know, simply just give them hints and just cross his fingers that they would learn, and it turned out that most of them did not learn.

[00:38:07] You know, if you look at, compare that type of pedagogy, With the pedagogy in high performing countries like China and Singapore, Japan, South Korea, many of these Far East Asian countries, you know, you find that it’s very different in those countries, that these countries focus on traditional mathematics, on memorization, so that kids understand what’s going on.

[00:38:31] Standard algorithms, which are basically the step by step process in order to achieve a mathematical solution to a problem, that they understand that very immediately, and then, because they practice often and memorize, that they have automaticity, you know, their ability to do mathematical problems is really automatic, because they have this foundational basis that is now imprinted in their minds. Unfortunately, our kids do not have that, and that’s why they’re struggling.

[00:39:01] Alisha Searcy: Wow. And, you know, you use the word that I recall very distinctly, former superintendent of charter network of schools in Atlanta. And I remember when teachers would go through training, that was the word that was used, allow students to struggle, to try to find the answers in math in particular.

[00:39:19] It’s mind blowing to think about the decisions that were made that I was a part of, and many of us were, but I think it’s important to note for history’s sake that a decade ago, you Pioneer Institute and others warned that Common Core Math ignored the 2008 National Mathematics Advisory Panel’s findings, as well as the example of the former math students in California and Massachusetts, which gave students access to Algebra I by 8th grade.

[00:39:47] And so can you talk about Common Core Math and why years after most states adopted it, including Georgia where I live, NAEP math scores have declined in two thirds of the states, including the highest performing ones?

[00:40:02] Lance Izumi: Absolutely. Pioneer and the Pacific Research Institute, you know, I’m the director of our education unit. We were really the earliest research organizations, certainly in the education reform movement, we were amongst the earliest to point out the deficiencies of education. of the Common Core. And we warned that the deficiencies in Common Core would end up leading to huge problems in math proficiency of students.

[00:40:29] And that’s indeed what has happened. And, you know, I cite, for example, a Pioneer Institute study that showed that during Common Core, when it was adopted in the early 2010s, As it progressed, that mathematics scores of kids, you know, went down. And that finding has been verified by federally funded studies as well.

[00:40:51] And so, we see that the Common Core has had an adverse impact on the big picture of test scores going down. But again, why is that happening? And so you’ve got to go to the details, and I go into some of the details with Common Core, and again, it de emphasizes a lot of the traditional ways we learn math as kids.

[00:41:12] I’m sure as you and I may have learned math, Alisha, you’ve de emphasized the standard algorithms, you know, again, the step by step processes that will lead you to the correct answer. Every time, you know, because that is viewed as drill and kill, you know, rote memorization, all those buzzwords and buzzphrases used by progressives to basically undercut what has been effective for centuries.

[00:41:37] And instead, that’s been replaced by convoluted strategies about how to solve problems. So for example, when you may multiply eight times three, instead of memorizing your times tables, to understand that the answer is going to be 24, so you have a Automatic recall, you might then use your fingers or use head bobs to count out groups of threes until you count out eight of them and then you have 24, right?

[00:42:05] And are you going to do that for every single problem that you see? I mean, that’ll give you a headache if you’re using head bobs. There’s a lot of picture drawing. You’re exactly right. That’s right. And so, and then Common Core also emphasizes. You know, group learning, which is a very ineffective way to do mathematics.

[00:42:23] I interviewed another math tutor named Sugi Sorensen, who says that what happens in group learning, which is pushed by Common Core, is that you have what he calls social loafing, where there’s, you know, one or two students in a group who are motivated and want to do the work, and then there are others who are simply free riders riding on their coattails, basically, and not learning anything.

[00:42:46] You know, it’s a very ineffective way of learning math, and I’ll tell you this, is that what’s sad is that under Common Core, the process becomes even more important than getting the right answer. I was actually, literally a couple weeks ago, at my dentist’s office, in the dentist’s chair, and my dental hygienist was asking me what I was up to, and I told her I had written this book called The Great Classroom Collapse, and she immediately launched into a recounting Well, her daughter was going through Common Core Math and, you know, she didn’t understand what was going on.

[00:43:22] And so she, my hygienist, who is an immigrant, actually hired a tutor for her from her home country and where they learned math using traditional methods. And this tutor taught her daughter how to solve these problems using, you know, standard algorithms and, you know, traditional mathematics. And she understood.

[00:43:41] Immediately, but the daughter then went back to her school, took a test, and was given an F even though she got all the right answers because the teacher told her she didn’t follow the method they had told her to use to solve those problems, even though she got all the right answers and she had been totally confused previously.

[00:44:02] So, that is insane, and then Common Core, I’ll just, you know, quickly say that Common Core pushes, you know, algebra, for example, to the 9th grade and had been in the 8th grade in California and Massachusetts, and that has wreaked havoc in the schools, because that means that it’s almost impossible for kids to get to calculus by the time they’re in school.

[00:44:23] a senior, because if you think about the progression, unless you double up on math classes, which would have sunk my boat, I know, when I was in high school, that most kids are not able to handle that. And then what happens in the end is that kids may go to higher education, and they are so poorly prepared with math skills that they’re unable to do college level math.

[00:44:44] I interview a math college professor who said that in his calculus class That probably 70, 80 percent of the kids will drop out of his class because they have such poor algebra skills. And he says, without good algebra skills, calculus is quicksand for these kids. And then he says that the rest of the class who stays in, those who don’t drop out, he said that if you took those same students and plop those students into calculus class in Singapore, he said that 95 percent of them would fail.

[00:45:16] His college is in the Silicon Valley area, and he said that the Silicon Valley high tech companies do not want his graduates. Because they are unable to do the level of mathematics that is expected in that industry. And so we have set these kids up for failures, we have set businesses up for failures, and we’re setting the economy and the country up for failure because we have decided to put adherence to progressive ideology over what actually works in the classroom.

[00:45:48] Alisha Searcy: Wow. That’s it right there. I do have one final question, and this is my favorite part, because now we get to talk about solutions. Again, my mind is reeling from everything that you just said. It’s so powerful, and I really hope people hear the implications of what happens when we don’t pass good policy.

[00:46:05] Even if we think it’s right, when we realize it’s wrong, we’ve got to be able to make those changes. And so, at the close of your book, you offer reform recommendations. Intended to persuade policy makers and school boards, teachers, and parents alike to embrace the changes to K 12 in education that would help restore academic quality, meritocracy, and equality of opportunity. So tell us what those conclusions and recommendations are, please.

[00:46:36] Lance Izumi: Well, thanks, Alisha. Now, I think this is obviously the most important thing. I don’t want this book to appear to your listeners as simply a book of woeful stories. Yes, you know, it’s important to understand, you know, the misery that kids and parents are going through in order to, what, not just to then have a pity party, but to then be a catalyst for change.

[00:47:00] That’s what we all want to do, is to change what isn’t working and institute better methods for change. So we can ensure the success of our students, our children. And you know, the first thing we’ve got to do is get rid of this adult ideology, which has taken hold of too many classrooms in America, at the expense of the learning of our children.

[00:47:21] And focus again on what works. I lay out in the book what works in reading, the science of reading. I lay out what works in mathematics. Traditional math, mathematics that, you know, have been taught in these high performing math countries. It’s often nowadays called the science of mathematics, in many ways very similar to the science of reading.

[00:47:42] But again, these are methods that have been proven to work, you know, over centuries. And so, uh, We need to look at reinstituting a program of what works over ideology. And I think that one of the things in order to give hope to people who read the book is I give examples of where parents are having success in pushing back against the education establishment, against these ideologies.

[00:48:09] So for example, and I don’t give easy examples. Examples like in San Francisco, for example, which, you know, most people think is probably one of the most, if not the most, progressive school districts in the country. You saw parents who basically revolted against the school district who had pushed eighth grade algebra to ninth grade algebra.

[00:48:29] And so parents said, no, we, a lot of our kids can do algebra at the eighth grade. Some of them might be able to do it even at the seventh grade. We want to have the ability to have our children. Be able to achieve according to their individual abilities, not because of some social justice equity vision that the district has, where you’re just trying to compress everybody into some lowest common denominator and basically eliminate individual merit.

[00:48:59] and individual competition. And so parents actually sued the school district to force the district to give them 8th grade algebra. Also, too, they put a ballot initiative in a recent election to restore 8th grade algebra. And you know something? That ballot initiative won overwhelmingly. And so, What we’re seeing is that now that the districts has basically put up the white flag and said they will now start to re institute algebra in the eighth grade.

[00:49:28] So if you can have victories in a place like San Francisco, then you can have victories everywhere in America. You know, one of the things that parents should do, and not just parents, but lawmakers and other policymakers need to do, is to look at the recommendations by the, uh, The National Council on Teacher Quality, who recommended that school districts themselves now should really look to hire teachers from education schools that are using research based methods.

[00:49:57] Unfortunately, too many of the schools of education are using these ineffective, progressive teaching methods, especially in reading. The National Council for Teacher Quality has even graded the schools of education and said that a majority of them in America are. Receiving D’s and F’s when it comes to research based reading methodologies that they’re teaching their prospective teachers, and so the NCTQ also recommends that school districts, school boards need to adopt curricula that uses Science of reading and other, again, other research based methods.

[00:50:32] And finally, I think state lawmakers, they need to require that these research based methods, such as the science of reading, be required in curricular and in teacher prep programs. And align licensure. Test according to these research based methods. You need to have some teeth, not just some recommendations that, you know, the education blob is going to forget in a nanosecond.

[00:50:56] And I think that what you’re seeing again across the country in red states, purple States, even blue States, that they’re moving to. to science of reading, for example, in New York State, very deep blue. And yet Governor Kathy Hochul has included in her just approved budget a back to basics initiative that will require New York State schools and teachers to be trained in the science of reading.

[00:51:24] And she’s gotten buy in from the institutions of higher education, like the State University of New York system, to teach their education students the science of reading so they’ll be prepared to go into the classroom and not end up being like Missy Purcell and having these kids leave in the classroom unable to read, unable to write sentences, unable to basically unlock their futures because they can’t read.

[00:51:51] Alisha Searcy: Yes. Lance Izumi, thank you so very much again for your passion, for your incredible work that you’re doing, and for being with us today.

[00:52:00] Lance Izumi: Well, thank you very much, Alisha. Thank you to you too, Albert, and to all of those at the Pioneer Institute. Again, we’ve gone through many battles, many wars together, and No, any other organization that I’d rather be locked in arms with than the folks at the Pioneer Institute.

[00:52:16] You do great work and I’m glad that we’ve been allies for all these years in the interest of improving the education for our children and guaranteeing that future that we all want them to have.

[00:52:28] Alisha Searcy: Absolutely. And same here. Thank you so much.

[00:52:31] Lance Izumi: Thank you.

[00:52:44] Albert Cheng: Well, Alisha, I know you were fired up to, uh, have this conversation with Lance Izumi, um, earlier, and I could see why. I mean, he’s certainly got a lot to say, so I really enjoyed that interview.

[00:52:53] Alisha Searcy: Absolutely. Policy nerds unite. I love it. Yeah.

[00:52:57] Albert Cheng: Well, hey guys and everyone, that takes us to the end of our show this week, but before we close out, I want to provide the tweet of the week.

[00:53:04] It comes from the 74 and the tweet reads, can AI. brings students back to the great books. And Alisha, I know we just bookmarked the conversation about leveraging technology instead of taking it away. I guess I’m, by hosting the show right now, kind of just going to take that bookmark and pick up. Real interesting article, actually.

[00:53:23] I’m really curious to see how this thing gets rolled out. So just to fill you in, someone’s developed a way to integrate AI into some really classic books and what. Readers are going to be able to do, as they read some of these well known texts, are to ask questions and then get access to commentary from other scholars and folks that have studied these books.

[00:53:48] It’s really kind of in the early stages, they’re just rolling out a few books, a few titles here. And I think some of the books, you know, maybe they only have 30 hours of pre recorded. I mean, I say only 30 hours, it’s a lot, but who knows what the upper limit is on these things, but you know, 30 hours of recorded content.

[00:54:04] So, you know, in developing this, I guess they’ve tried to anticipate the kinds of questions that come up and essentially have content that readers can access to help them understand and get their questions about these books answered. So check out the article to learn some more. I mean, it’s going to be fascinating to see how this all gets rolled out.

[00:54:23] It is. I’m excited about that. Well, hey, Alisha. Thanks for co hosting with me on this week’s episode. Always a pleasure.

[00:54:30] Alisha Searcy: Always.

[00:54:32] Albert Cheng: And please tune back next week. We are going to be joined by Edward Acorn. He’s a writer, historian, and author of Every Drop of Blood, the momentous second inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, and the Lincoln miracle inside the Republican convention that changed history.

[00:54:48] So join us next week as we talk Abraham Lincoln. See you then.

[00:54:53] Alisha Searcy: See ya!